


the road not taken (looks real good now)

by Ceara_Einin



Series: Saving What We Love - 2020 [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Force Bond (Star Wars), Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Intense Loneliness, Mostly Canon Compliant, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Saving What We Love 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28082064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceara_Einin/pseuds/Ceara_Einin
Summary: Rey just got back from a mission. She'd rather be alone, away from all the legacies of Jedi and everything the Resistance needs her to be. But the Force has other ideas.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Saving What We Love - 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2057262
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	the road not taken (looks real good now)

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 of #SavingWhatWeLove 2020  
> Prompt: Intense Loneliness

It wasn’t a bad mission, not technically. Rey never tires of exploring new worlds, seeing for herself all the vast diversity of the galaxy. Going out on Resistance missions is everything she would have dreamed of as a little girl – if only her parents has been with her. Shili really was a lovely planet, home of the Togruta and filled with savannahs and lush rainforest valleys. With Threepio’s help, Rey managed to pick up enough Togruti to navigate Corvala reasonably well.

And yet, Rey scurries from the pilot’s seat into the _Falcon_ ’s innards the moment they land back on Ajan Kloss. The ship runs much smoother under her hand, but the _Falcon_ always has something in need of fixing. She’s closer to a hodge-podge of mismatched parts and quirky repairs than the sleek freighter she must have once been. Before Han took her adventuring, certainly.

“She sounded good,” Poe calls after her. “What’s wrong this time?”

“What _isn’t_ wrong? There’s always something,” Finn says.

Chewie roars out a rather grumpy defense of a ship “well-loved” just as Rose chides, “Finn, she’s gotten us this far. Just needs some TLC.”

The easy banter among her friends usually eases Rey’s heart, reminds her that in the midst of a war and all this headache of finding her place among the legends of the Jedi, they still have each other. But at times, it feels they have each other more than she has them.

She’s the Jedi, and they’re rebels. Resistance fighters who’ve grown up hating the Empire and the First Order. She grew up scavenging scraps and marking her long, tired days on the wall of a fallen AT-AT. The Empire was evil in stories she heard, but the insides of Empire ships kept her alive. The First Order was evil because it was the machine that stole Finn from his family and made him a stormtrooper. Now Kylo Ren – Ben – sits as Supreme Leader and she should hate him.

She should hate him.

Rey fights against the First Order with her friends, because they at least share her sense of right and wrong and they’ve helped her make something close to home. But she hasn’t held their hand by firelight with a galaxy of almosts between them and a fine, silver thread of possibilities and destinies binding them together through the Force.

Something changed after the Force awoke in her. After Ben – no, he was Kylo then (wasn’t he?) – reached inside her mind for information and found an equal instead. She’s not like them, these Resistance fighters she calls her friends.

When the five of them go on missions – six, if she counts BB-8 – they look to her for Jedi mind tricks when there’s a potential ally teetering on the edge. Rey nudges the mind until the ally agrees, with a touch nearly as gentle as Ben’s – no, Kylo’s, she can’t forget that – first brush against her mind. (She didn’t know he’d carried her like a bride to his ship until she shoved into his mind too and found the memory as she searched for his weakness.)

(She wonders now if his weakness was always destined to be her. She wonders if it’s fair, because her weakness is him.)

Rey has never had the luxury of being weak. She’s a stranger to wanting for something and having it close enough she could taste it.

(She almost tasted him, there in the elevator. There, across the fire. There, in the throne room before he traded a tyrannical throne for her.)

Rey takes Han’s beat-up old tool set with her as she scuttles into the small room with the hyperdrive engine. It’s working well enough, but the _Falcon_ stutters a bit at the first jump. She just needs some TLC.

The voices of her friends grow louder as they leave the cockpit, only to fade away as they exit the ship minutes after the ramp hisses open. Finn and Poe will give the report to Leia, and Chewy and Rose will probably be back soon with parts for the ship. Rey repaired the compressor again, and the _Falcon_ has a few shorted wires they didn’t have spares for.

Rey takes to the hyperdrive with a wrench stained across its dirty yellow handle. She won’t be alone for long. In the meantime, she can keep her hands busy enough she won’t think of how the Togruta leaders looked at her. How Poe introduced her like some Resistance miracle, the last spark carrying on Luke’s legacy from Crait.

She’s no miracle. She doesn’t even have a family that loved her.

“Kriff!” Rey drops the wrench and rubs over the angry red welt of pinched skin. She sometimes forgets about that split in the handle, and every time she does it pinches her for it.

“The blue one turns easier.”

Rey stiffens. The bond opens quieter now, in these months after Crait. Like the Force knows she’ll close it off if she can, so it chooses to surprise her.

She picks up the yellow wrench just to spite him, though she’s careful of the split. She gets four bolts off and the panel open before he says her name.

“Rey?”

She _hates_ when he says her name. (She doesn’t.) He sounds like Ben again when he says her name.

Rey frowns at the mess of parts and wiring. She’ll have to dig around more to find the little catch, but at least she has an excuse for keeping her back to him.

He hasn’t had a mask in months. She’s wondered if he’ll have another one made; he has too soft a mouth, eyes too open for a Supreme Leader.

Some part of her wishes he’d don the mask again. It would be easier, then, to think of him as Kylo.

(He’s not Kylo. He hasn’t been Kylo since he killed Snoke for her, for himself.)

(She wonders if he was ever really Kylo at all.)

She feels the tug of his heart before he speaks.

“Don’t,” Rey whispers.

He doesn’t.

She wishes he would.

Rey fiddles with the hyperdrive until she finds the problem – a transmitter just ever so slightly misaligned. A few jiggles set it in place. She’ll ask Chewy to turn on the _Falcon_ and check, but even distracted, she’s good at repairs.

She turns with Ben’s name bright across her lips before she remembers everything they are and everything they aren’t. Rey’s half-smile melts down to nothing as she finds the air empty and cold behind her.

Ben is gone. And she shouldn’t mind.

But even in the impossibility of everything, she can be forgiven for taking comfort in knowing he’s still with her.

Maybe someday, he’ll be with her in all the ways she wants.


End file.
